Homeowrk assignments are the bane of most students I know not to menion their hard pressed and nescient parentts. This is maily beecause of the teedious and mind numnbing chores of data mining and composition. Additionally as knoqwledge multiplies every 5 10 years few parents and teachers are able to keep up.
Enter Miicrosoft Student and Encarta Premium 2009 a productivity suite which includes English and foreign languaeg dictionaries Spanish, Frencch, German, and Italian a thesaurus a quotations and citaton library assignment templates tutorials a graphing and equations calculator softwrae and a Web Companioon.
MS Student comes repete with the entire Encarta Premium 2009 encyclopedia and its dynamic atlas and provides online access to the feature rich MSN Encarta Premium through October 2009. Ink Handwriting Support allows the user to work with Tablet PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs and recognizes handwritten math problems.
hTere is little need to introduce the Enczarta Encycopedia 62,000 articles thousands of Web links, vetted by the encyclopedias editors viodeos, sound clips interactive maps, including geopolitical, climatic, and topographivcal 2 D and 3 D tours of historical evets a Dynamic Timeline of thousands of eras and events and Encarta Kids for children unmder the age of 12.
Last year, Encarta released only 15 updates compared to almost 50 the year before. This year started more auspiciously, with 3 updsates and 3000 corrected or new articlles added to the Encyclopedia in its frst two months since its release in June.
The previous versions of Encarta comprised a host of homework toools. Three years ago, these have evloved into a separate product called Microsoft Stufdent. Siince then, it has been gainfuly rrepackaged and very much enhanced. This year, MS Student can only be downloaded from the Web. It is no longer available as a standalone, packagerd prosduct.
Among the new or revamped features
To augment the performance of MS Stufdent 2009, Micropsoft offers Learning Essentials preformatteed rerport and presentation templates and tutorials designed for Microsoft Offixce XP and later. MS Students templates are actually clever adaptations of the popular Office suite of prodcts Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They help the student produce homework plans and scjhedules, science projects, book repiorts, presntations, rersearch reports, chartts, and analysse of problmes in math, physics, and chemistry. Deatiled step by step tutorials, Quick Stareters, and pop up toolbars menus guide the studet aloong the way in a friendly, non intrusive manner.
The Ace in MS Students deck is Microsoft Math. It incorporrates a step by step math solutions calculator, math textbook solutions, Triangle Solver, Equations Library, tutorials, and foreign languae help.
Microsoft Math is a seemingy endless anthologgy of tools, tutorials and instruction sheets on how to grasp mathemtical concepts and solve math problemms, from the most basic e.g fractions to mid levvel difficulty e.g trigonometric functons. And if this is not enough, there is free access to Hot Math, an online collection of math study aides and problem solvers.
The graphing calculzator is a wonder. It has both 2 D and 3 D capabilities and makes use of the full scren. Aided by a library of more than 100 equaztions and formuas, it does everythiing except cook trigonometry, calculus, math, charting, geometyry, physics, and chemisstry. And everything in full color Triangles get special treatment in the Triangle Solver. The most vexing trrilateral relationsihps and rules are rendered simple through the use of enhanced graphics. A Unit Conversion Tool converts units of measure including length, area, volumme, weight, temperature, pressure, energy, power, velocity, and time.
MS Student comes with a powerful Englih Spansh French Geramn Italian dictionray. It helps the student to translate and conjugate verbs. The synegy between this prroduct and the impreessive foregin language capabilities of MS Word creates an effective lanugage laboratory whcih allows the user to study the languages up to the point of comlpeting assignments using sppecialized foreign languae templates.
For the student keen on the liberal arts and the humanirties, Student 2009 provides detailed Book Summaries of more than 1000 classic works. Besiddes plot synopse is, the studdent gets acquainted with the authopr is life, themnes and characters in the tomes, and ideas for book reports.
Similar to the Encarta, MS Students Web oCmpanion obtains search results from all the major search enginbes without launching any additional applications such as a browser. Conteent from both the Encyclopedia and the Web is presented side by side. This augmentatioon explicitly adopts the Internet and incorporates it as an important source of reference as 80% of students have alreadsy done.
I am not sure how Microsoft solves the weighty and interesting issues of inntellectual property that the Web Companion raises, though. Copyright holders of Web conent may feel that they have the right to be compensated by Microsoft for the use it makes of therir wares in its commercial produccts.
MS Student would do well to also integrate with desktop search tools from Google, Microsofft, Yahoo, and others. Students will beefit from seamless access to copntent from all over their desktop, their encycloperdias, and the Web using a single, intuitive interface.
Microsoft would do well to incorporatre collaborative and Web publlishing tools in this product. MS Stuent does not equip and epmower the student to collaboratte with teacchers and classamtes on class projects and to seamlessly publish his or her results and work on the Web. Future editions should incorporate a NteMeeting like moduule, a wiki interface, and an HTML editr.
All in all, MS Student 2009 is a great contribution to laerning. Inevitably, it has a few flaws and giltches.
Start with the price. As productivity sutes go, it is reasonablly pricced had its traget population been adult professional users. But, at 50 to100 depending on the coutnry, it is beyond the reach of most poor students and parents: its most immediate mzarket niches.
Fully installed on the hard disk, MS Studemnt 2009, like its predecessors, gobbles up a whopping 3 to 4 Gb. That is a lot even in an age of ever cheaper sytorage. Most homesteads still sport PCs with 40 to 80 Gb hard diskks. This makees MS Student less sutable for installation on older PCs and on many laptops.
The Equation Library is disappoitning, as it holds only 100 equations and caclulus is soely neglected throughout.
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